Republican Senate Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) wasn't happy with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt after her Thursday press conference.

According to Leavitt, President Donald Trump's "patience is running out."

She explained that the president wants his Safeguard American Voter Eligibility America Act (SAVE America Act) passed before the lawmakers leave for the August recess.

"The House did its job," said Leavitt. "The Senate needs to do its job, too."

Thune lashed out at Leavitt while speaking to reporters, "Well, maybe she or somebody else ought to get on the phone and get the votes. Right?"

The only way to pass the voter restrictions is to break a filibuster with a 60-vote majority or eliminate the filibuster entirely.

Right-leaning White House correspondent for the Daily Wire, Mary Margaret Olohan, cited Thune in an X post, saying that votes for the bill currently stand at about 50 out of the 53 Republican Senators. The bill would require the president to work across the aisle with Democrats to pass it, but it's not something Trump has needed to do, as Republicans hold the majority in both houses.

Thune wants the White House to target Democrats, not to make the bill bipartisan but to attack them for the filibuster threats.

"Instead of pointing the finger at Republicans, they might think about going after the people who are stopping it on the floor, which is the Democrats," Thune raged. "And if there are Republicans that they think are gettable, get on the phone. Let’s get them to ‘yes.’"

The House attached the legislation to a budget bill. The Senate parliamentarian had said that the SAVE America Act can't be attached to a funding bill, but Republicans in the House found a way around it. The House bill includes $10 billion in funding that would essentially pay states through financial incentives to comply with pieces of the SAVE America Act. It would not, however, turn it into law.

A budget bill can pass the Senate without needing the 60-vote filibuster threshold.

Republicans in the House also attached a portion of the SAVE America Act to a ban on members of Congress trading stocks.

According to the voting rights site Democracy Docket, "Despite Republican control of the Senate, it is unlikely that Trump will see any version of SAVE enacted ahead of the midterms. Legislation passed through reconciliation must be budgetary in nature. The Senate parliamentarian, the chamber’s procedural umpire, ruled last month that the SAVE America provisions did not fit the bill, leading Trump to call for her ouster."

Punchbowl News reporter Andrew Desiderio asked Thune why the White House would come after him like that and if he thinks the White House is setting him up as the fall guy for 2026 election failures.

“I wish I had a good answer for that," Thune said.

Since the 1990s, Texas has been a Republican stronghold. The late Democratic governor, Ann Richards, was voted out of office in 1994, when she lost to Republican George W. Bush (who went on to be elected president in 2000). And Democrats have been struggling in statewide races in Texas ever since.

Yet in 2018, former Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-Texas) narrowly lost to incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). And the fact that a Democrat came within striking distance in a U.S. Senate race sent shockwaves through Texas politics.

Now, according to Politico, another U.S. Senate race is worrying GOP strategists in the Lone Star State.

Two well-known conservatives — veteran Washington Post columnist George Will and former Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Matthews, who served in the first Trump Administration — believe that Texas' 2026 U.S. Senate race could be in play for Democrats if State Attorney General Ken Paxton is the GOP nominee instead of incumbent Sen. John Cornyn. However, Will and Matthews also stress that Cornyn, if he wins the primary, would be very hard to beat in the general election.

In an article published on February 26, Politico journalists Liz Crampton, Jordain Carney, Samuel Benson, Alex Gangitano and Adam Wren report that "Republicans in Washington" are "growing more alarmed that their increasingly vicious intraparty contest could cost them a must-win Senate seat."

According to the reporters, "Sen. John Cornyn appears to be headed to an expensive and nasty 10-week runoff against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, with a strong chance that Paxton wins the nomination even after national Republicans spent months airing his dirty laundry all over the Texas airwaves in an effort to boost Cornyn….If Cornyn loses the primary, Senate Republicans worry they could be forced to spend hundreds of millions of dollars that could otherwise go toward key battleground races in expensive states like North Carolina, Georgia or Michigan, complicating their path toward holding Senate control."

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) is among the Republicans who is sounding the alarm about Texas.

Thune told Politico, "Honestly, if you look at the polling in a general election setting, I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that the seat (flips), depending on who the Democrats nominate….We have to be prepared to spend there, and that's a very different scenario if Cornyn's the nominee. He is by far, I think, the best candidate on the ballot in a general election — not only for the Senate, but also, for down-ballot races in the House that could be impacted by the Senate race too."

A GOP operative, interviewed on condition of anonymity, told Politico, "All signs indicate that Paxton probably finishes first. We're just hoping the gap is close enough (that) the narrative isn't 'Paxton kicked the crap out of Cornyn.'"

Cornyn told Politico, "Unfortunately, the attorney general has got so much baggage and corruption in his wake that he will jeopardize our chances of keeping this seat red in November. I believe that I can help President Trump in (the) end of his second term by not only winning this race, but bringing along some of these congressmen who are running in these five new congressional seats. Ken Paxton jeopardizes all of that."

Lone Star politics were recently rocked by a bombshell when, in a deep red district in the Fort Worth suburbs, Democrat Taylor Rehmet won a special election for a Texas State Senate seat by 14 percent. Donald Trump carried that district in 2024 by 17 percent in 2024.

In Texas, Democrats perform well in major urban centers like Houston, Austin and El Paso but struggle in statewide races. The last time a Democrat won a gubernatorial race in Texas was Richards' victory in 1990, and the state's last Democratic U.S. senator, Bob Krueger, left office in 1993 after losing a special election to Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison.

Moreover, Texas hasn't gone Democratic in a presidential race since Jimmy Carter in 1976.

President Donald Trump’s refusal to work cooperatively with the Senate has caused many to complain that it has become a “circular firing squad.” Now he has refused to endorse his Senate Majority Leader, John Thune of South Dakota, for reelection — and Thune sarcastically slapped him back.

"Alright,” Thune said when confronted about Trump’s betrayal, according to Punchbowl. “Well, that’s nice of him. I GUESS. I don’t know what do you say on that. That’s a decision that’s made by my colleagues!"

Earlier on Wednesday, The Hill reported that Senate Republicans are conflicted on how to handle their wayward president.

"GOP senators are divided over whether to cut short the five-week break, which would take vulnerable Republican incumbent Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Jon Husted (Ohio) and Dan Sullivan (Alaska) away from the campaign trail," The Hill wrote. "They’re also at odds over whether to dive into what Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) warned would be a 'risky' attempt to pass a budget package that contains billions of dollars for an unpopular foreign conflict, as well as funding for farmers and election-related reforms."

The report added, "Looming over it all are the fast-approaching midterms and festering frustration among some Republicans about the curveballs being thrown by the president. Trump and his allies are pushing hard for the Senate to vote as soon as next week on a budget resolution to unlock the process to advance a $95 billion proposal drafted by the House to help cover the costs of the Iran war — even though Thune warned last week that such a proposal doesn’t have 50 Republican votes to advance in the Senate."

Trump is upset with Thune because the Senate Majority Leader has refused to focus on Trump’s voter suppression bill, the SAVE America Act, which he admitted as far back as February 2026 does not have the votes to pass.

Republicans are beginning to panic, according to a new CNN report, as a major rift appears to be growing between President Donald Trump and a top party leader at a time when everyone needs to lock in for the midterms.

As CNN noted in a new weekend report, Trump and Senate Majority Leader John Thune appear to have gone largely radio silent with one another, with "days, if not weeks" passing between times when the top senator hears from the president. Thune has suggested that the two only speak "more on an as-needed basis" lately, in stark contrast to Trump's dynamic with House Speaker Mike Johnson, who "sometimes can’t get [him] off the phone."

Johnson has been noted as one of the more committed and enthusiastic lieutenants for the president in Congress, making their active relationship somewhat unsurprising. Thune, by contrast, has drawn significant ire from Trump in recent months over his insistence that the SAVE America Act is dead on arrival in the Senate. The bill — which would implement major voter ID requirements and has been called Trump's "No. 1 priority" — lacks the support in the Senate to overcome the filibuster threshold, with Thune being obstinately opposed to altering those rules to pass the bill.

"While the two have never been personally close, with the mild-mannered Thune far different in style than the mercurial and combative president, they were in much more frequent communication at the start of Trump’s second term, according to senators and people who know both," CNN explained. "Trump would frequently praise Thune’s leadership as the Senate GOP leader ushered through his agenda and often bit his tongue when he disagreed with the president, whether it was about an incendiary social media post or a policy like sweeping tariffs that hurt his constituents in South Dakota. Yet in their private talks, Thune uses a very direct approach with Trump, bluntly explaining what can and cannot be accomplished in the Senate, GOP sources say, far different than other Republicans who tend to follow the president’s orders, no matter how implausible."

This increasingly frosty relationship has some in the party sweating about the damage this could do to the party in the coming midterms, which they are already expected to lose badly to Democrats.

"We need to be talking up the wins, talking about how crazy Democrats are, and instead we are knifing each other," one anonymous GOP senator told CNN.

“The infighting is not really productive,” Sen. Jim Justice, a West Virginia Republican, said. “There’s no point in going round and round and round.”

“I would say we’re all longing for a relationship with the White House where we work more in harmony,” Sen. John Curtis, a Utah Republican, added.